Sunday Afternoon Field Trips Resumed.....

Every Sunday afternoon Richard and I take time to check out the fields and make plans for the week. We obviously take the winter off, but looks like it's time to resume our Sunday field tours! It's a beautiful, sunny day in our valley and here's a glimpse of what we found.

SUNCHOKES: We left some of the sunchokes from last year's crop out in the field to overwinter. Here's what the field looks like above the ground.......dried stalks that we'll have to chop. Richard dug a few tubers to see what is happening underground. The report is they look just fine. We're going to try them out for dinner tonight. I'm thinking roasted sunchoke soup with a pickled black radish salad. If all goes as planned, we're hoping to dig sunchokes later this week.















RAMPS: We couldn't resist. We carefully crossed the little foot bridge to cross the river into the ramp woods knowing it might be a little early to find anything, but we got lucky!! The sprouts are just starting to push through, but we found them. The forecast this week is for a pretty nice, warm week. If the weather holds, we could be looking at starting our ramp harvest in 4 or 5 weeks! If you are trying to find the sprouts in the picture, look for the purple sprouts....green leaves will come soon.



GARLIC: The garlic field looks really nice covered in it's blanket of mulch. But what is going on under that blanket? A lot has been going on under that mulch and the bulbs we planted last October are doing their thing pushing down roots and pushing sprouts out the top. We even found an area where the sprouts are pushing through the mulch and peeking out. Look at the end of Richard's finger if you are having trouble seeing the sprouts in the picture.

Looks like this will be a busy week ahead of us. We still need to finish pruning the currants and the crew has just a little more pussywillow to trim and bunch. The celeriac in the greenhouse started to push through yesterday so it's time to move it off the heat table and put the first round of brassicas (broccoli, cauliflower, kohlrabi, and cabbages) on the table. The ginger and tumeric seed arrived last week.....and it's gorgeous!!! We'll put that into flats tomorrow, put it under the tables and wait impatiently for 4-6 weeks for it to do something!